Year 1 English Syllabus
Year 1
Year level description
In the early childhood phase of schooling, learning, development and wellbeing are connected and learning experiences are informed by the Principles and Practices of the Early Years Learning Framework. A holistic curriculum that integrates knowledge, understandings, skills, values and attitudes across learning areas connects learning to children’s lives and their natural curiosity about their world.
English provides opportunities for children to learn through a blend of developmentally appropriate intentional approaches, including play-based learning, inquiry and explicit teaching.
In Year 1, children act with intentionality and agency to explore how English, as the shared language of the learning environment, can be used to meet their diverse needs and interests. They learn to interact with familiar audiences for different purposes. Children have opportunities to develop their control and understanding of the symbolic representations associated with written language. An emphasis on literacy is encapsulated in a holistic approach to learning where key ideas and concepts in a range of learning areas are presented in culturally and phase‑appropriate ways.
Critical literacy is integral to the English curriculum. It is developed when children actively question, analyse and evaluate the texts they engage with. In Year 1, children draw on growing knowledge of context, text structures and features as they begin identifying the purpose of texts.
Children engage with a range of texts for enjoyment and learning. They listen to, read and view spoken, written and multimodal texts that include traditional oral tales; imaginative and informative picture books; various types of print, oral and digital stories; rhyming verse, poetry, songs and chants; film and animations; dramatic performances; spoken texts; media, online and digital texts; non-fiction texts; and texts used by children as models for creating their own texts. In Year 1, children develop their reading in a text-rich environment through engagement with a range of texts, including:
- literature that reflects and expands their world, with straightforward sequences of events and everyday happenings with recognisably realistic or imaginary characters
- texts to support children to make literal and inferred meaning
- decodable texts that systematically introduce words with phoneme–grapheme correspondences that align with phonic development for children to continue to practise and consolidate their decoding, if required
- authentic texts that support and extend developing readers and use a small range of language features, including simple and compound sentences, some unfamiliar vocabulary, high-frequency words and other words that need to be decoded using developing phonic knowledge
- informative texts, with illustrations and diagrams, presenting new content about familiar topics of interest and topics introduced in other learning areas
- texts that support learning in English and across the curriculum.
Children create short spoken, written, visual and multimodal texts whose purposes may be imaginative, informative and persuasive. These texts may include responses, such as personal reflections or opinions, recounts of events or experiences, procedures, retells or adaptations of familiar stories, reports, dramatic performances and poetry. Children make choices about texts according to their interests and curiosities.
Year 1
Achievement standard
By the end of the year:
Speaking and Listening
Children recognise how they interact with others for different purposes. They listen to and create short spoken texts to communicate what they know, understand or have experienced. They share ideas, retell or adapt stories, recount or report on events or experiences, and express opinions using some information gained from learnt topics, topics of interest or texts. They sequence ideas and use language features, including topic-specific vocabulary and words that represent parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
Reading and Viewing
Children actively listen to, read, view and comprehend a range of texts. They monitor meaning and make connections between characters, settings and events, and to personal experiences. They recall key ideas and recognise literal and implied meaning in texts. They recognise the text structures of narrative and informative texts, and the associated language and visual features. They blend short vowels, common long vowels, consonants and digraphs to read one- and two-syllable words. They use knowledge of common letter patterns to read an increasing number of high-frequency words. They use sentence boundary punctuation to read with developing phrasing and fluency.
Writing and Creating
Children create short oral, written and/or multimodal texts to show understanding of the connection between writing, speech and images, including retells or adaptations of stories with events and characters. They report information and express opinions about personal experiences. They create a range of texts that may include informative, imaginative or persuasive texts and include information from learnt topics, topics of interest or texts. They write simple sentences with sentence boundary punctuation and capital letters for proper nouns, using topic-specific vocabulary. They spell most one- and two‑syllable words with common letter patterns, and accurately apply an increasing number of taught high-frequency words to their created text.
Year 1
Content descriptions
Language for interacting with others
Explore how language, facial expressions and gestures are used to interact with others when asking for and providing information, making offers, exclaiming, requesting and giving commands
WA1ELAI1
For example:
- asking and answering questions in planned and unplanned discussions and conversations
- identifying emotions expressed in film or picture books and discussing what the characters may be feeling or thinking
Explore language to provide reasons for likes, dislikes and preferences
WA1ELAI2
For example:
- using conjunctions, such as because, when giving reasons
- communicating and experimenting with words to express likes and dislikes, such as fabulous, excellent, terrible, awful
- using adjectives and intensifiers, such as really like, like very much, extremely angry
Text structure, organisation and features
Explore how texts are organised according to their purpose, such as to recount, narrate, express opinion, inform, report and explain
WA1ELAT1
For example:
- sequencing of events in recounts
- headings, images and diagrams in multimodal texts
- opening, plot development and ending in narratives
- following a written or multimodal recipe to participate in a shared activity, such as exploring the purpose of the headings in a recipe
Explore how repetition, rhyme and rhythm create cohesion in simple poems, chants and songs
WA1ELAT2
For example:
- experimenting with repeated patterns, such as In the dark, dark woods …, when constructing texts
Explore how print and digital texts are organised using features, such as page numbers, table of contents, headings and titles, navigation buttons, swipe screens, verbal commands, links and images
WA1ELAT3
Language for expressing and developing ideas
Understand that a simple sentence consists of a single independent clause representing a single event or idea
WA1ELALA1
For example:
- identifying the subject and verb in clauses, such as the seagulls (subject) were flying (verb)
- responding to prompts to generate sentences that contain a subject and verb
Understand that words can represent people, places and things (nouns, including pronouns), happenings and states (verbs), qualities (adjectives) and details, such as when, where and how (adverbs)
WA1ELALA2
For example:
- identifying nouns and verbs in simple sentences
- experimenting with the use of adverbs to enhance sentences
- sorting words into categories, such as noun, adjective, verb depending on the context they are used in
Compare how images in different types of texts contribute to meaning
WA1ELALA3
For example:
- interacting with and comparing images in picture books, short films or other multimodal texts
- discussing the meaning of complementary images or diagrams in a range of informative and imaginative texts
Recognise the vocabulary in everyday contexts as well as learning area topics
WA1ELALA4
Understand that written language uses punctuation, such as full stops, question marks and exclamation marks, and uses capital letters for familiar proper nouns
WA1ELALA5
For example:
- identifying a range of punctuation marks when reading and beginning to use them to guide expression, such as using a question intonation
- writing their own name and those of some familiar places starting with a capital letter
Phonic and word knowledge
Segment words into separate phonemes (sounds), including consonant blends or clusters at the beginnings and ends of words (phonological awareness)
WA1ELAP1
For example:
- breaking spoken words into their individual phonemes, such as p‑o‑t, sh‑o‑t, th‑r‑ow, b‑e‑n‑d, b-r‑a‑n‑d
Orally manipulate phonemes in spoken words by addition, deletion and substitution of initial, medial and final phonemes to generate new words (phonological awareness)
WA1ELAP2
For example:
- generating new words, such as spot – deleting the [s] to make pot, changing the [o] in pot to [e] to make pet, changing the [t] in pet to [n] to make pen
Use short vowels, common long vowels, consonant blends and digraphs to write words, and blend these to read one- and two-syllable words
WA1ELAP3
For example:
- blending, segmenting, reading and writing one‑ and two-syllable words that contain
- short vowels in the medial position: a, e, i, o, u
- have common long vowels, such as <a_e> make, <ai> train, <ay> say; <ea> sea, <ee> need, <e> me; <i> tiny, <ie> pie, <i_e> life; <y> my; <o_e> bone, <oa> boat; <u_e> tube
- start with common consonant blends (clusters), such as <bl>, <br>, <cl>, <cr>, <dr>, <fl>, <fr>, <gl>, <gr>, <pl>, <pr>, <sl>, <st>, <tr>
- end with common blends (clusters), such as <st>, <ld>, <nd>, <lf>, <nt>
- start with consonant digraphs, such as <wh>, <ph>
- end with consonant digraphs, such as <ck>, <ng>, <ff>, <ll>, <ss>, <zz>
Understand that a letter can represent more than one sound and that a syllable must contain a vowel sound
WA1ELAP4
For example:
- identifying letters that represent a sound different to its common grapheme–phoneme correspondence, such as that <c> can also make an [s] sound as in circus or cent or that <s> at the end of words, such as is, was and his, is pronounced as [z]
- recognising that sometimes <y> can be a substitute vowel, such as in why or happy
Spell one‑ and two‑syllable words with common letter patterns
WA1ELAP5
For example:
- spelling CVC, CVCC, CCVC, CCVCC and CVVC words with common letter patterns, including spelling words that contain common r‑controlled vowels, such as <ar> far, and common diphthongs, such as <ow> cow, <ou> house
- drawing on a range of strategies and resources when writing to spell words with common letter patterns
Read and write an increasing number of high‑frequency words
WA1ELAP6
For example:
- reading high-frequency words encountered in texts read independently
- drawing on a range of sources to write an increasing number of high-frequency words
Recognise and know how to use grammatical morphemes to create word families
WA1ELAP7
For example:
- adding suffixes to a base word to make grammatical word families, such as jump, jumped, jumper, jumping
- categorising words
Literature and contexts
Discuss how language and images are used to create characters, settings and events in literature by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, wide‑ranging Australian and world authors and illustrators
WA1ELICO1
For example:
- generating vocabulary to describe images from picture books or movies
- listening to, viewing and reading a wide range of literary texts and identifying events that make them exciting, such as problems or unexpected happenings
- describing interpretations of literary texts, such as images, characters, settings and events
Engaging with and responding to literature
Discuss literary texts and share responses by making connections with children’s own experiences
WA1ELIEN1
For example:
- listening to a text, such as a poem about families, and making connections to own experiences
Examining literature
Discuss plot, character and setting in stories
WA1ELIEX1
For example:
- discussing personal thoughts about favourite characters, whether a setting is real or imagined, or how the problem in a story was resolved
Listen to, discuss and perform literary texts, including stories, poems, chants, rhymes and songs, and imitate and invent sound patterns, including alliteration and rhyme
WA1ELIEX2
Creating literature
Retell or adapt a story using plot and characters, language features, including vocabulary, and structure of a familiar text through spoken texts, role-play, writing, drawing or digital tools
WA1ELICR1
For example:
- participating in yarning circles that tell stories based on familiar texts
- adapting a story to perform as a play
Texts in context
Discuss different texts and identify some features that indicate their purposes
WA1ELYT1
For example:
- identifying features of texts which are specific to the text type, such as the purpose of indexes in
non-fiction texts, images that help make meaning in a story, or rhyme in a poem and how it helps readers remember the words
Interacting with others
Use interaction skills, including turn-taking, speaking clearly, using active listening behaviours and responding to the contributions of others, and contributing ideas and questions
WA1ELYI1
Analysing, interpreting and evaluating
Describe some similarities and differences between imaginative, informative and persuasive texts
WA1ELYA1
For example:
- discussing and comparing different types of texts on a similar topic, such as illustrations in a fictional picture book about the Australian bush and diagrams in an informative text on the same topic
Read decodable and authentic texts using developing phonic and word knowledge, phrasing and fluency, and monitor meaning using context and grammatical knowledge
WA1ELYA2
For example:
- drawing on phonic knowledge to read regular CV, VC, CVC and CCVC and CVCC and CCCVC words in phonic (decodable) readers
- use phonic and vocabulary knowledge to read some authentic texts, such as environmental print, shared and personally chosen texts
- using strategies, such as self-monitoring for meaning, or re-reading when meaning breaks down
- using punctuation, such as full stops and commas to develop fluency and prosody
Use comprehension strategies, such as visualising, predicting, connecting, summarising, monitoring and questioning when listening, reading and viewing to build literal and inferred meaning in texts by drawing on vocabulary and growing knowledge of context and text structures
WA1ELYA3
For example:
- previewing texts to draw on prior knowledge of text structure to help navigate the text
- making connections to other texts to help build literal and inferred meaning
- listening for and drawing on vocabulary, such as topic‑specific words to help summarise an informative text
- monitoring understanding by participating in discussions and reflecting on other people’s ideas about texts
- visualising a character and/or setting using the author’s descriptions to help build inferred meaning
- searching for information to clarify questions or misunderstandings about the text
Creating texts
Create, re-read and co-edit short written and/or multimodal texts to report on a topic, express an opinion, or recount a real or imagined event or experience, and use imagination to tell, retell or adapt a story, using grammatically correct simple sentences, some topic-specific vocabulary, sentence boundary punctuation and correct spelling of some one‑ and two‑syllable words
WA1ELYC1
For example:
- creating written texts using words, punctuation and images for different purposes, such as a recount of a shared experience or an informative text about a favourite hobby
Create and deliver short oral and/or multimodal presentations on personal and learnt topics, which include an opening, middle and concluding statement, some topic-specific vocabulary and appropriate gesture, volume and pace
WA1ELYC2
Explore features of familiar digital tools to create or add to texts
WA1ELYC4
For example:
- experimenting with using the camera on a tablet to add an image to a text